Risen!

Don't miss this reflection too! This is an all-or-nothing day.

While it's great for a Christian preacher to have the rest from preaching that a sabbatical brings this is a frustrating day to keep silent. But I point you to this sermon as an inspiration.

Emma

In his well-researched account of Charles Darwin's faith (or increasing lack of faith) Nick Spencer pulls out a fascinating sentence from a letter written to Charles by his wife-to-be Emma.

May not the habit in scientific pursuits of believing nothing till it is proved, influence your mind too much in other things which cannot be proved in the same way, and which if true are likely to be above our comprehension.

As Easter approaches it seems to state the obvious that if we apply only reason and experiment we will never discover the wonder of the Easter message. Studying biological processes reveals only that dead means dead. No amount of evolutionary speculation can anticipate the human DNA becoming God-in-flesh. Consequently, that God incarnate died for my sins and came back to life is, frankly, unprojectable from the laboratory.


Walking past or standing at a place of burial I don't need a scientific experiment to tell me that the odds are stacked against a return to bodily life. So, to return to Emma's wise warning to her future husband, we are without hope if there is nowhere we can look above the laboratory.

On my travels in Scandinavia I was at first bewildered by several pews in the style above. It looked more like an intimate railway carriage than a church seating plan! All became clear when I attended a service in such a church. The pulpit was halfway along the side wall. Thus the pews in the front section had their back to the pulpit. When later in the liturgy the preacher entered the pulpit to preach, the half of the congregation in the front pews turn round by moving to sit on the opposite pew while the sermon is preached, thus facing the pulpit after all!

Though Emma Darwin was hardly an orthodox believer, she at least perceived the need to turn round to understand some things that will only be revealed by a higher Word. Easter week is supremely a time to stop facing the way I came into this world, and face the way that listens to what God's word is wonderfully revealing.

Richard

On this day often used to celebrate the reputed author of a famous prayer, I am struggling to make any connection between the 13th century originator and the 20th century interpretation . . .



The connection, albeit unintentional, is 'not living at a fixed address'!

Chaplains

The end of life is difficult when it comes slowly, but what better place to live out those last days that the coast of Florida? Be prepared, though, that should you end up in one particular hospice you may find the chaplains have a limited spiritual input, limited by sometimes not being allowed to include God in what they say!

I've spent time (alright, I confess, had meals) with two very interesting chaplains on my Sabbatical and both of them also work with limitations, though not the ridiculous one from Boca Raton.

The first was a chaplain in the British Army for 22 years. These days he's a local vicar and, needless to say, the services in his church always start (and finish) exactly on time! He told me how, as he went further into his chaplaincy, he could always spot a newly-appointed chaplain. He would be the one who carried books or Bibles, mini communion sets and other religious encumbrances.

"When you've been a chaplain a while," he said to me over lunch, "you understand that all you have and all you can carry is you and your faith."

The second chaplain is blog-sensitive because he is working in a medical facility in a fiercely Islamic country where any proselytising would get him on the next plane and the convert possibly into the next life. Yet despite that apparent limitation he was hugely excited about his work and his witness.

"There's a lot that I cannot say and some things I cannot do, but there are a lot more people watching who I am than would ever happen in a parish."

Chaplaincy is perhaps a reminder to believers that wherever we are we can bear a witness to God. Except, possibly and ironically, in a dying corner of Florida in the land to which the Pilgrim Fathers fled to secure religious freedom . . .